J.D. Vance says he’s a job creator in the state of Ohio. Here’s what the numbers show.

Throughout his Senate campaign, GOP candidate J.D. Vance has touted his business credentials as a venture capitalist and job creator for the state of Ohio.

“My business in Ohio has been involved in investing and supporting the creation of nearly 1,000 jobs just in our state and jobs elsewhere as well,” he said in a recent debate with his opponent, Democrat Tim Ryan. “I believe in investing in our communities, and I’ve actually put my money where my mouth is.”

A POLITICO analysis of information provided by his venture capital firm and Vance’s financial disclosure forms suggest that 1,000 may be a bit of a stretch. Since it was founded in 2019, Narya, Vance’s venture capital firm, was part of a group of at least 46 investors who together invested in three companies that created a total of about 750 jobs in the state of Ohio between 2019 and 2022.

“We’re proud to say that, in just over 2.5 years, Narya has already invested in three Ohio companies that have collectively created approximately 750 jobs,” Vance’s partner, Falon Donohue, said in a statement. “These companies are growing quickly so we anticipate even more hiring in the short term.”

Vance and Ryan are scheduled to appear at a Fox News town hall on Tuesday — their final meeting of the campaign. Ryan, who has tried to make Vance’s venture capital career an issue in the campaign, has called Vance a “San Francisco vulture capitalist.” In a recent ad, he highlights Vance’s personal investment in AcreTrader, which Ryan claims sells farmland to Chinese citizens.

Vance’s business record, including his job creation estimate, is open to interpretation.

Steve Stivers, the former Republican congressman and the president of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which is remaining neutral in this year’s Senate race, said the state’s rate of job creation has been as low as 1,000 jobs a month so the addition of 750 new jobs is meaningful.

“The 750 jobs would be almost what the whole state gained in a month, which is pretty significant,” Stivers said.

But Jeff Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, noted that Narya was just one of 46 firms that contributed to the investments, so it can’t claim credit for directly creating all 750 jobs.

“It would be impossible to parse out which investor is responsible for each job created,” Sohl said in an email. “If one assumes that each investor can take an equal share of the job creation (which is a reasonable assumption) then at best Narya can claim 750 jobs divided by 46 investors which equals 16 jobs.”

Former AOL Chair and CEO Steve Case, who launched the Rise of the Rest venture fund where Vance worked, told POLITICO that Vance’s political pivot to support Trump “was a surprise and frankly, a disappointment,” but added that “backing more startups in more parts of the country, obviously, is what we're all about.”

A partner at another Ohio-based venture capital fund, granted anonymity to speak freely about Vance’s business record, told POLITICO that “claiming responsibility for creating 1,000 jobs is definitely a reach. We measure job creation based on incremental jobs since our investment.”

Vance is best known to the public as the author of the bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” which told the story of his hardscrabble childhood in Appalachia and how he used military service and an Ivy League education to eventually succeed in finance.

Since 2016, Vance has worked for three venture capital firms. First, he was with Mithril, the firm headed by his political benefactor and mentor, Peter Thiel. Next, he spent a year at Rise of the Rest, the fund launched by Case, which focuses on investing in heartland enterprises.

In 2019, Vance moved back to Ohio and founded his own venture capital firm with a Connecticut-based co-founder, naming it Narya after one of the author J.R.R Tolkien’s so-called rings of power, this one “fire.”

Vance’s business record has been a part of his campaign since at least his launch last July. “What we need in Washington is not just leaders who talk about doing things,” he said at his campaign announcement last year, “but have actually done them and will continue to do them.”

“J.D. made a commitment to build a business in Ohio,” Taylor Van Kirk, a Vance campaign spokesperson, said in a statement prior to the Oct. 10 Senate debate. “In its early stages it's helped to create hundreds of jobs in the Buckeye state, and it will be a catalyst for even more Ohio jobs in the future.”

After the debate, the Vance campaign spokesperson said Vance’s estimate that he had created "nearly" 1,000 jobs comported with their figure of 750, and also pointed to hundreds of additional jobs Vance’s company has invested in outside Ohio.

Narya, which paid Vance approximately $327,000 in salary last year, is backed by Thiel, Google co-founder Eric Schmidt and the investor Marc Andreessen. One of its biggest investments resides outside the United States: the right-wing Canadian YouTube competitor Rumble. Narya has just four employees, including Vance.

Narya’s three Ohio investments are situated near the state’s capital and largest city, Columbus. They are: Branch, an umbrella home and auto insurance provider; AmplifyBio, a commercial drug discovery firm; and Strive Asset Management, an index fund company. None of the three Ohio companies in which Narya has invested count Vance’s firm as their only financial supporter.

Vance’s campaign also told POLITICO he would step down from Narya should he win in November but declined to make the candidate or any of his Narya partners available for an interview.

Only one of the Ohio firms Narya invests in — AmplifyBio — returned POLITICO emails seeking clarification about how many jobs Narya’s investments directly support and what median salary they pay. The drug developer said it employs 231 people after a $200 million funding round, to which Narya contributed.

AmplifyBio may be Vance’s biggest success at Narya, but one for which he cannot claim sole credit. Focused on vaccine technologies along with drug development, the company grew from 120 employees in 2021 after two early stage investments. Narya was one of four investors, which also included Battelle Memorial Institute, Casdin Capital and Viking Capital.

An AmplifyBio spokesperson reported a median salary of $62,400, higher than the state’s median household income of $58,116. The person added the company is building a 350,000-square-foot expansion in the city of New Albany. They did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about what the employees did.

In all, Ohio is home to 38 percent of the 1,975 jobs Narya says its investments created across nine states. Including Kentucky, where Vance has family origins and where Narya counts 600 jobs, that figure rises to 68 percent. Overall, the firm has made just 12 investments, according to Crunchbase — and Ohio has seen more of its dollars flow there than any other state.

Vance’s personal balance sheet, meanwhile, shows some investment in Ohio businesses. According to his campaign, the venture capitalist has personal investments of roughly $1 million in companies connected to at least two venture funds. Of that figure, as much as $161,000 is invested in five Ohio companies across two venture funds with which he’s been affiliated.

Branch, the insurance company founded in 2017, employs roughly 400 people, up 300 employees in the last year alone. That growth was fueled by a $147 million fundraising round, led by Weatherford Capital, that Narya participated in along with 11 other firms in June.